the famous Montserrat, a peculiar mountain which at first sight raises a
suspicion of an optical illusion, so hard is it to believe that Nature
could ever have yielded to so strange a caprice. Imagine a succession of
little triangles connected with each other, like those which children
use to represent a chain of mountains, or a crown with a pointed
circlet, stretched out like the teeth of a saw or a great many
sugar-loaves ranged in a row, and you have an idea of the distant
appearance of Montserrat. It is a group of immense cones which rise side
by side one behind another, or rather one great mountain formed of a
hundred mountains, cleft from the summit to a distance almost one-third
of its height in such a manner that it presents two grand peaks, around
which cluster the lesser ones. The highest altitudes arid and
inaccessible; the lower slopes mantled with pine, oak, arbutus, and
juniper, broken here and there by measureless caverns and fearful
precipices, and dotted by white hermitages, which stand out in bold
relief against the aërial crags and the deep gorges. In the cleft of
the mountain, between the two principal peaks, rises the ancient
monastery of the Benedictines, where Ignatius Loyola meditated in his
youth. Fifty thousand pilgrims and sight-seers annually visit the
monastery and the caves, and on the eighth of September a festival is
held which brings together an innumerable throng from every part of
Catalonia.
Shortly before we arrived at the station where one gets off of the train
to ascend the mountain, a group of school-boys from an academy of some
unknown village rushed into the railway-carriage. They were making an
excursion to the monastery of Montserrat, and a priest accompanied them.
They were Catalans--with fair, ruddy faces and large eyes; each one
carried a basket containing bread and fruit; one had a scrap-book,
another a field-glass. They all laughed and talked at once, rollicked
about on the seats, and filled the car with infinite merriment. But,
although I strained my ears and racked my brain, I could not understand
a word of the miserable jargon in which they were chattering. I entered
into conversation with the priest.
“Look, sir,” said he after the preliminary sentences, as he pointed out
one of the boys: “he knows all the Odes of Horace by heart; the way in
which that other boy can solve problems in arithmetic would astonish
you; this one here is a born philosopher;” and so he described to me the
gifts of each.
Suddenly he interrupted himself to shout “_Beretina!_” (Caps). The boys
all drew their red Catalonian caps from their pockets, and with cries of
delight proceeded to put them on, some slipping them back so that they
fell over their necks, the others pulling them forward until they
dangled in front of their noses. The priest made a gesture of
disapproval, and at once those who had their caps pushed back pulled
them over their noses, and those who had them pulled forward pushed them
back over their necks, with laughter and shouts and clapping of the
hands.
I approached one of the most roguish of the boys, and, merely for the
fun of it, knowing that I might as well have talked to a wall, I asked
in Italian, “Is this the first time you have made the journey to
Montserrat?”
The boy thought for a moment, and then answered very slowly,
“I--have--been--there--before--at--other--times.”
“Ah! my dear boy!” I cried with a feeling of satisfaction hard to
imagine, “and where have you learned Italian?”
The priest here put in a word to say that the boy’s father had lived
several years at Naples. Just as I was turning toward my little Catalan
to continue the conversation my words were cut short by a miserable
whistle, and then the wretched cry of “_Olesa!_” the village at the foot
of the mountain. The priest bade me good-bye, the boys tumbled out of
the car, the train was off again.
I put my head out of the window and shouted to my little friend, “_Buona
passeggiata!_” (A pleasant walk), and he shouted back, emphasizing each
syllable, “A-di-o!” Some may laugh at the thought of mentioning these
trifles; nevertheless, they are the liveliest pleasures of the
traveller’s experience.
The towns and villages which one sees in crossing Catalonia toward
Arragon are almost all populous and flourishing, surrounded by
workshops, factories, and buildings in course of construction, from
which in every direction one sees thick columns of smoke rising here and
there among the trees, and at every station there is great running
hither and thither of peasants and merchants. The country is a pleasing
succession of cultivated fields, gentle hills, and picturesque valleys
until one comes to the village of Cervera.
Here one begins to see great stretches of arid land with a few scattered
houses, which announce the proximity of Arragon. But then, unexpectedly,
one enters a smiling valley clothed with olive-groves, vineyards,
mulberry trees, orchards, and dotted with towns and villas. One sees on
the one side the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, on the other the
mountains of Arragon--Lerida, the glorious city of ten sieges, along the
bank of the Segre, on the slope of a beautiful hill; and all about a
luxuriance of vegetation, a variety of scenery--a glorious feast to the
eye. It is the last view of Catalonia; in a few minutes one enters
Arragon.
Arragon! What vague memories of wars, of bandits, queens, poets, heroes,
and storied lovers dwell in the echo of that sonorous name! And what a
profound feeling of sympathy and respect! The old, noble, haughty
Arragon, from whose brow flash the splendid rays of the glory of Spain!
upon whose ancestral shields is written in characters of blood, “Liberty
and valor!” When the world bent beneath the yoke of the tyrants the
people of Arragon said to their king, through the mouth of their
chief-justice, “We, who are as great as thou, and more potent, have
chosen thee for our lord and king on thy agreement to obey our commands
and conserve our liberties; and not otherwise.”
And the king knelt before the might of the magistrate of the people and
took his oath on this sacred formula.
In the midst of the barbarity of the Middle Ages the fiery race of
Arragon recked not of torture; the secret trial was banished from their
code; all their institutions protected the liberty of the citizen and
law held absolute sway. Discontented with their narrow mountain-home,
they descended from Sobrarbe to Huesca, from Huesca to Saragossa, and as
conquerors entered the Mediterranean. Joining with brave Catalonia,
they redeemed the Balearic Isles and Valencia from Moorish dominion;
fought Murat for their outraged rights and violated consciences; tamed
the adventurers of the house of Anjou and spoiled them of their Italian
lands; broke the chains of the port of Marseilles, which still hang on
the walls of their temples; with the ships of Roger di Lauria ruled the
seas from the Gulf of Taranto to the mouth of the Guadalquivir; subdued
the Bosphorus with the ships of Roger de Flor; swept the Mediterranean
from Rosas to Catania on the wings of victory; and, as though the West
was too narrow for their ambition, they dared to carve upon the brow of
Olympus, the stones of the Piræus, and the proud mountains which form
the gates of Asia the immortal name of their fatherland.
These were my thoughts on entering Arragon, although I did not express
them in these very words, for I did not then have before me a certain
little book by Emilio Castelar. The first sight upon which my eyes
rested was the little village of Monzon lying along the stream of Cinca,
noted for the famous assemblies of the courts and for the alternate
attacks and defences of Spanish and French--the common fate of almost
all the villages of the province during the War of Independence. Monzon
lies outstretched at the foot of a formidable mountain upon whose side
rises a castle as black, sinister, and appalling as the grimmest of the
feudal lords could have planned to condemn the most detested of
villages to a life of fear. Even the guide pauses before this monstrous
edifice and breaks forth in a timid exclamation of astonishment. There
is not, I believe, in Spain another village, another mountain, another
castle which better represents the fearful submission of an oppressed
people and the perpetual menace of a cruel ruler. A giant pressing his
knee on the breast of a mere child whom he has thrown to the
ground,--this is but a poor simile to give an idea of it; and such was
the impression it made upon me that, although I do not know how to hold
the pencil in my hand, I tried to sketch the landscape as best I could,
so that it might not fade from my memory. And while I was making
scratches I composed the first stanza of a gloomy ballad.
After Monzon the country of Arragon is merely a vast plain, bounded in
the distance by long chains of reddish hills, with a few wretched
villages, and some solitary eminences upon which rise the blackened
ruins of ancient castles. Arragon, so flourishing under her kings, is
now one of the poorest provinces of Spain. Only on the banks of the Ebro
and along the famous canal which extends for forty miles from Tudela as
far as Saragossa, serving at the same time to irrigate the fields and to
transport merchandise,--only here does commerce thrive. Elsewhere it
languishes or is dead.
The railway-stations are deserted; when the train stops one hears no
other sound save the voice of some old troubadour who strums his guitar
and chants a monotonous ditty, which one hears again at all the other
stations, and afterward in the cities of Arragon: the words varied, but
eternally the same tune. As there was nothing to be seen out of the
window, I turned to my travelling companions.
The car was well filled: we were about forty in number, counting men and
women, and as the second-class carriages in Spain do not have
compartments, we could all see each other--priests, nuns, boys,
servants, and other persons who might have been business-men or
officials or secret emisaries of Don Carlos. The priests smoked their
cigarettes, as the custom is in Spain, amicably offering their
tobacco-pouches and rolling paper to those beside them. The others ate
with all their might, passing from one to another a sort of bladder,
which when pressed with both hands sent out a spurt of wine. Others were
reading the newspaper, wrinkling their brows now and then with an air of
profound meditation.
A Spaniard will not put a piece of orange, a bit of cheese, or a
mouthful of bread into his mouth in the presence of others before he has
asked every one to eat with him; and so I saw fruit, bread, sardines,
and cups of wine pass under my nose, everything accompanied with a
polite “_Gusta usted comer, commigo?_” (Will you eat with me, sir?) To
which I replied, “_Gracias_” (No, thank you), though it went against the
grain to do so, for I was as hungry as Ugolino. Opposite to me, with her
feet almost touching mine, sat a young nun, if one were to judge of her
age by her chin, which was all of her face visible below her veil, and
by her hand, which lay carelessly on her knee. I looked at her closely
for more than an hour, hoping that she would raise her face, but she
remained motionless as a statue, although from her attitude it was easy
to see that she was obliged to resist the natural curiosity to look
around her; and for this reason she finally won my admiration. What
constancy! I thought; what strength of will! What a power of sacrifice
even in these trifling matters! What a noble contempt for human vanity!
As I was engaged with these thoughts I happened to glance at her hand;
it was a small, white hand, and it seemed to me to be moving. I watched
it more intently, and saw it escape very slowly out of the sleeve,
extend the fingers, and rest on the knee, so that for a moment it hung
gracefully down; then it turned a little to one side, was drawn back,
and again extended. Oh, ye gods! anything but contempt of human vanity!
I could not have been mistaken; she had gone to all that trouble merely
to display her little hand, yet she did not once raise her head all the
time she remained in the car, nor did she even allow her face to be
seen when she got out. Oh, the inscrutable depths of the feminine mind!
It was ordained that I should make no other friends than priests during
the journey. An old father with a benevolent expression spoke to me, and
we commenced a conversation which lasted almost to Saragossa. At first,
when I said I was an Italian, he became a little suspicious, thinking
perhaps that I had been one of those who had broken the bolts of the
Quirinal, but when I told him that I did not busy myself about politics
he was reassured and talked with perfect freedom. We chanced upon
literature. I repeated to him the whole of Manzoni’s Pentecoste, which
delighted him, and he recited for me a poem of the celebrated Luis de
Leon, a sacred poet of the sixteenth century, and we were friends. When
we came to Zuera, the last station before arriving at Saragossa, he
arose, bade me good-bye, and with his foot on the step he turned quickly
and whispered in my ear, “Beware of the women; they bring evil
consequences in Spain.” When he alighted he stood to watch the train
start, and, raising his hand with a gesture of fatherly admonition, he
said a second time, “Beware!”
It was late at night when I reached Saragossa, and as I left the train
my ear suddenly became aware of the peculiar cadence with which the
hackmen, the porters, and the boys were speaking as they quarrelled over
my baggage. In Arragon even the most insignificant people can speak
Castilian, although with some mutilation and harshness; but your pure
Castilian can recognize the Arragonese before he has spoken half a word;
and, in fact, the Andalusians can imitate their accent, and do so
occasionally in derision of its roughness and monotony, as the Tuscans
used sometimes to mock the speech of Lucca.
I entered the city with a certain feeling of reverent fear. The terrible
fame of Saragossa oppressed me; my conscience almost upbraided me for
having so often profaned its name in the school of rhetoric, when I
hurled it as a challenge in the face of tyrants. The streets were dark;
I saw only the black outline of the roofs and steeples against the
starlight sky: I heard only the rumble of the coaches as they rolled
away. At certain turns I seemed to see daggers and gun-barrels gleaming
at the windows and to hear far off the cries of the wounded. I do not
know what I should have given if I could have hastened the daybreak, and
so have gratified that eager curiosity which was stirring within me to
visit one by one those streets, those squares, those houses, famous for
desperate conflicts and horrible slaughter, painted by so many artists,
sung by so many poets, and so often in my dreams before I departed from
Italy, that I used to murmur with delight, “I shall one day see them.”
Arrived finally at my hotel, I looked at the porter who conducted me to
my room with an amiable smile, as though I would have said, “Spare me!
I am not an invader!” And with a glance at a large painting of Amadeus
hanging at an angle of the corridor--a great reassurance to Italian
travellers--I went to bed as sleepy as any of my readers.
At daybreak I hurried from the hotel. Neither shops, doors, nor windows
were yet open, but hardly had I taken a step in the street before an
exclamation of surprise escaped me, for there passed me a party of men
so strangely dressed that at first sight I believed them to be
masqueraders. Then I thought, “No, they are the silent characters of
some theatre;” and then, again, “No, they are madmen, beyond a doubt.”
Imagine them: for a cap they wore a red handkerchief bound about the
head like a padded ring, from which their dishevelled hair stuck out
above and below; a blanket, striped blue and white, worn like a mantle,
and falling almost to the ground in ample folds, like the Roman toga; a
wide blue sash around the waist; short breeches of black corduroy
gathered in tight at the knee; white stockings; a sort of sandal laced
over the instep with black ribbons; and yet bearing with all this
picturesque variety of vesture the evident impress of poverty, but with
this evident poverty a manner not only theatrical, but proud and
majestic, as shown in their carriage and gestures--the air of ruined
grandees of Spain; so that one was in doubt, on seeing them, whether to
laugh or to pity, whether to put one’s hand in one’s pocket and give
them an alms or to raise one’s hat as a mark of respect. But they were
simply peasants from the country around Saragossa, and this which I have
described was only one of a thousand varieties of the same manner of
dress. As I passed along at every step I saw a new costume. Some were
dressed in ancient, others in modern, style; some with elegance, others
simply; some in holiday attire, others with extreme plainness; but every
one wore the scarf, the handkerchief about the head, the white
stockings, the cravat and parti-colored waistcoat.
The women wore crinolines with short skirts, which showed their ankles
and made their hips seem ridiculously high. Even the boys wore the
flowing mantle and the handkerchief around the head, and posed in
dramatic attitudes like the men.
The first square I entered was full of these people, who were sitting in
groups on the doorsteps or lying about in the angles formed by the
houses, some playing the guitar, others singing, many going about
begging in patched and tattered garments, but with a high head and fiery
eye. They seemed like people who had just come from a tableau in which
together they had represented a savage tribe from some unknown country.
Gradually the shops and houses were opened and the people of Saragossa
began to fill the streets. The citizens do not appear different from us
in dress, but there is something peculiar in their faces. They unite
the serious expression of the Catalans with the alert air of the
Castilians, and then add a fierceness of expression which belongs
entirely to the blood of Arragon.
The streets of Saragossa are severe, almost depressing, in appearance,
as I had imagined they would be before I saw them. Excepting the Coso, a
wide street which runs through a large part of the city, describing a
grand semicircular curve--the Corso famous in ancient times for the
chariot-races, jousts, and tourneys which were celebrated in it at the
times of the public feasts,--excepting this beautiful and cheerful
street and a few streets which have recently been rebuilt like those of
a French city, the rest are tortuous and narrow, flanked by tall houses,
dark in color and with few windows, reminding one of ancient fortresses.
These are the streets which bear an impress and which have a character,
or, as another has said, a physiognomy, of their own--streets which once
seen can never be forgotten. Throughout one’s life at the mention of
Saragossa one will see those walls, those doors, those windows as one
saw them before. At this moment I see the court of the New Tower, and
could draw it house by house, and paint each one with its own color; and
so vividly does the picture live in my imagination that I seem to
breathe that air again, and to repeat the words which I then spoke:
“This
[Illustration: _Street in Saragossa_]
square is tremendous!” Why? I do not know: it may have been an illusion
of mine. It is with cities as with faces--each one reads them in his own
way.
The streets and squares of Saragossa impressed me thus, and at every
turn I said, “This place seems to have been made for a combat,” and I
looked around as though something was needed to complete the scene--a
barricade, the loopholes, and the guns. I felt again all the profound
emotions which the account of that horrible siege had produced upon me:
I saw the Saragossa of 1809, and hurried from street to street with
increasing curiosity to find the traces of that gigantic struggle at
which the world trembled. Here, I thought, indicating to myself the
place, passed the division of Grandjean, there perhaps Musnier’s command
sallied forth; at this point the troops of Morlot rushed into the fight;
at that angle before me the light infantry of the Vistula made their
charge; still farther round occurred the attack of the Polish infantry;
yonder three hundred Spaniards were cut down; at this spot burst the
great mine which blew a company of the Valencian regiment to atoms; in
this corner fell General Lacoste, his forehead pierced by a bullet.
There lie the famous streets of Santa Engracia, Santa Monica, and San
Augustine, through which the French advanced toward the Coso from house
to house with a blasting of mines and counter-mines, through crumbling
walls and smoking beams, under a tempest of bullets, grape-shot, and
rocks.
There are the narrow ways, the little courts, the dark alleys, where
they fought those horrid battles, hand to hand, with bayonet and dagger,
with scythes and their very teeth; their houses barricaded and defended
room by room, in the midst of fire and ruin, the narrow stairways which
ran with blood, the gloomy halls which echoed to cries of pain and
despair, which were covered with mutilated corpses, which saw all the
horrors of pestilence, famine, and death.
As I was walking from street to street I came out in front of the
cathedral of Our Lady of the Pillar, the terrible Madonna to whom came
the squalid rout of soldiers, citizens, and women to plead for
protection and courage before they went to die on the ramparts. The
people of Saragossa still persevere in their ancient fanaticism in
regard to it, and venerate it with a peculiar sentiment of love and
fear, which still lives in the minds of persons who are strangers to all
other religious feelings. Nevertheless, from the moment you enter the
court and raise your eyes toward the church to the moment you turn on
leaving it to take a farewell look, be careful not to smile or make any
careless gesture which might possibly seem irreverent; for there are
those who see you, who watch you, and who will on occasion follow you,
and if faith is dead within you, prepare your mind, before you cross
the sacred threshold, for a confused reawakening of those childish
terrors which few churches in the world have such power to revive even
in the coldest and most callous of hearts.